Beyond the Grave
by some kind of harmony
Summary: Sherlock spends too much time hiding near his own gravestone. At least he's not there alone. Post-Reichenbach.


[**Disclaimer:** The Sherlock characters belong to Moffat and Gatiss, the BBC, Arthur Conan Doyle.

**A/N: **Thanks to caitalonas on tumblr for beta help!

Set after Reichenbach.]

**Beyond the Grave**

_"One more miracle, Sherlock, for me."_

.

Sherlock Holmes had never been a person who dealt in miracles. He had lived in a world of observations, science, and one John Watson.

In that light, very little has changed.

His world includes John long after John's world stops including Sherlock. Sherlock spends most of his time after his not-death hidden near his own not-gravestone. John visits every few days. Sometimes Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson stop by.

.

_No sign of Mycroft—he won't mourn here. Good. Mycroft ought to repent from afar. Not that the smug bastard would have the first idea how to repent. No, it's even better than that: he'll have to learn. If that irks the wanker, that's better than fine._

_ Obviously Sherlock deduced the truth about Mycroft's little question-and-answers with Moriarty. Sherlock knew before John knew—though it was actually one of the cleverest deductions John's made to date…_

_ Mycroft had just made a mistake, just one simple mistake. _

_ Mycroft doesn't make mistakes. _

_ Mycroft's mistakes __make men topple like dominoes and worlds implode on cue. It's Sherlock's own world that has imploded now. It's Sherlock's world, and maybe John's a little bit too._

_ ._

Despite the surprisingly semi-frequent traffic, his grave is an effective place to hide. People never search for the living when they visit a grave. Rather, they spend inordinate amounts of time lavishing attention on a marble slab. Oftentimes they carry on conversations with the stone. It's a stand-in for the living, a personification of something impossible to restore. Sherlock could never have predicted that. Being dead has offered Sherlock a prime position for deductions. He has much to observe.

Mrs. Hudson isn't sleeping. It was an obvious conclusion; it's very easy to tell if people are sleeping properly. Insomnia has more signs than the well-known baggy skin under one's eyes. It doesn't take a criminal mastermind to mask skin with makeup to fool everyone else into thinking they're getting proper sleep. Everyone except Sherlock: there are specific wrinkles and speech patterns he knows to observe. Mrs. Hudson doesn't seem to have bothered to conceal her exhaustion, either way.

.

_John sleeps. John has nightmares. _

_ John's nightmares are vicious now, even worse than the nightmares where he finds himself in Afghanistan all over again. It's why John works late as frequently as possible, even though he knows the long hours upset Sarah. But John and Sarah are only friends now. John can do just as he pleases. _

_ It pleases John to visit Sherlock's grave on weekends and during the rare lull at the clinic and even, sometimes, at lunch._

_ Sherlock stays by his grave. _

_ He does not miss a visit. He needs every opportunity to deduce._

_ ._

Mrs. Hudson spoke to his grave; specifically, she shouted at it. She had stared at the marble slab with a harmless, burning ferocity. She cried but her tears didn't seem to be angry, per say. There had been a kind of warmth behind that anger that Sherlock will never understand.

Mrs. Hudson never looked away from his grave, not once.

Objectively speaking, his repeated experiments prove his grave is one of the safest places where he could hide.

_ ._

_ No, no, no: that's not objectivity. That's weakness; that's sentiment. _

_ The safest place for Sherlock is anywhere else on the entire planet. Afghanistan would be safer. _

_ He ought to take his trust fund and search for the Woman. He ought to adopt a new accent and hide in another country. He has all the freedom of death, yet he chooses to stay in London? _

_ It's laughable. _

_ Mycroft would laugh and laugh._

_ ._

It's not actually his grave, of course. Obviously he's not buried there. But his name is printed on the slab of marble so no one thinks to check, and Sherlock has come to think of it as his own.

.

_ Mycroft would laugh endlessly; he would laugh in the way that bites at Sherlock's insides. Under the guise of Mycroft's amusement everything becomes a criticism. Mycroft would chuckle; his chuckle would accuse Sherlock of subjectivity and weakness. It would be absolutely, entirely, correct._

_ ._

Despite the fact that Sherlock's current state of existence, so to speak, is an uniquely ideal state for deduction, Sherlock remains aware that every day he grows less and less objective. He can feel it happening; every time John visits his grave he can feel the heart that he's not supposed to have shuddering away in his chest. John shouldn't come by at all—Sherlock's deduced that John seems sadder after his visits. He limps more when he leaves the grave. His steps are slower. He moves as though his entire body is heavier though there is no medical explanation available. John left Afghanistan with a psychosomatic limp; his body projects his fears even better than most.

John's seeing his therapist again, the utterly useless one that insisted he start a blog. He drinks more coffee than he used to. He's given up eating jam like it's some kind of sacrifice. He won't take Stamford's phone calls but he answers all of Harry's emails. He hasn't started going out on dates again.

.

_John will find a girlfriend soon: Sherlock knows that just under three weeks from now John will find someone pretty to distract him. She will comfort him with sex and whatever else it is girlfriends are good for. Sherlock has never seen the need for girlfriends but John always seemed to. _

_ John will find one; he will stop visiting Sherlock's grave. _

_ Sherlock is certain he is correct about his estimate. It's the only reason why he stays to watch John fall apart. The only reason Sherlock doesn't escape England, even though he ought to…_

_ Sherlock won't leave. _

_ He can't leave John. Not until John leaves him first._

_ ._

Objectivity reminds him that nothing ever lasts (marriages, secrets, life spans) and that there will be a day when John won't come back to his grave at all. But Sherlock doesn't pay much attention to objectivity these days. He makes deductions disproportionately; at moments his entire world seems reduced to the things he knows and the things he can learn about this single man. This colleague-flatmate-friend—there's no proper label Sherlock knows of to explain what John means.

Sherlock _feels_ his way to these conclusions when John isn't standing before him; a maudlin subjectivity reigns when John is gone. When John is there, Sherlock remembers how to focus again; he starts observing. He observes all that he can and saves it for later, for the day (just under three weeks from now) when John won't return.

Sherlock's world used to be about making deductions, but lately it's been reduced to making deductions about John. This is acceptable. It's proper penance for what Sherlock did to John. Even though he did it to save John's life, Sherlock knows it was selfish of him to leave John alone.

Before John finds his new girlfriend, anyway.

.

_No, no, no: it's worse than that. It's even worse. _

_ Far more selfish. _

_ Sherlock knows he stays by his grave because he needs new observations about John more than he needs air. What good does air do? He can hold his breath for exactly ten minutes and he can't hold John at all. In his not-death Sherlock knows he would hold John if he could. He would do so even if John complained they were giving people reason to talk. But things have changed; John wouldn't tell him that now. Would he?_

_ If he held John maybe Sherlock could finally wipe the soldier's reserve, and the desperation to cry buried deep underneath the soldier's reserve, off John's face. _

_ Sherlock wants John to stop wanting to cry, even if that means John has a new girlfriend. But Sherlock doesn't need John to be happy anywhere near as much as he just needs John._

_ It's utterly, entirely selfish: Sherlock knows why he fell to his not-suicide. _

_ He wouldn't let Moriarty have John. _

_ Never._

_ Not even if Moriarty had planned to keep John healthy and alive. _

_ John will decide to leave; Sherlock won't let anyone take him away._

_ ._

And now John stands at his grave and asks Sherlock for one more miracle—he doesn't ask aloud anymore, not after the first time, but Sherlock watches him thinks about it, every visit. John even thinks about it when he's not visiting: Sherlock is well aware John has been parading around London, _believing_ in him, making him into a legend for any willing to indulge. John still hopes, in the midst of all his sadness. Sherlock know better.

Sherlock was clever, he is so very clever, but Moriarty handed him a puzzle that he could not and cannot solve, never entirely. Sherlock's world doesn't have room for miracles.

Sherlock lives in a world of tiny things, ordinary things that he can observe, temporary and disposable details that lead to deductions and answers. Miracles are large and dramatic and the effort it takes to believe them—to constantly reject or rationalize extensive evidence to the contrary—is utterly beyond his grasp. That effort takes up an unbelievable amount of critical space in one's hard drive. John is so stubborn, though, that he refuses to actually reprioritize his hard drive to stop thinking about Sherlock. Or rather—Sherlock somehow remains high priority even now, even in death.

John's depth of loyalty constantly astounds him. It's not a miracle; Sherlock has observed concrete and repeated evidence. It is also logically impossible.

.

_ It's only because John doesn't think hard enough that he remains so loyal. He's like a dog, isn't he, exactly like a simple-minded pet—_

_ No, no, _no:_ Observe._

_ John is never so simple though he is often dull. _

_ John saved Sherlock's life more than once. _

_ John shot a man for Sherlock after knowing Sherlock for less than forty-eight hours. Lestrade nearly arrested John, Sherlock nearly deduced his new flatmate straight into police custody. If it had taken Sherlock even a few more seconds to reevaluate John, to sizably adjust his hard drive around the idea that John, that _anyone, _might have risked arrest to save him…Sherlock remembers trying to process the deduction; he found his eyelids had closed and he snapped them right open. A psychosomatic blink: his body's own projection of shock. _

_ Even now Sherlock struggles to process indefinable expanse of John's fidelity. _

_ It is not a task often required of Sherlock. _

_ It is the polar opposite of boring._

_ Sherlock has gained many things from strangers and acquaintances—frustration, favors, respect—but John was the first to teach Sherlock that loyalty can exist in Sherlock's life. _

_ ._

Lestrade—who brought nicotine patches to his tombstone, which Sherlock quite liked—and Mrs. Hudson, with her anger that is also warmth, never would have visited his grave if John hadn't been Sherlock's friend to begin with. When Moriarty held all three of them at gunpoint, Sherlock was well aware that his three friends were as much John's doing as his own. Moriarty may have been the first person to claim Sherlock had a heart, but John was the reason anyone could see his heart to begin with.

Sherlock needed John as a conductor of his thoughts, but also his emotions. John was a perfect conductor of light. He was, in fact, unbeatable—he reflected Sherlock from beyond the grave. Maybe that's why he visited Sherlock's grave. Maybe it helped him recharge. And maybe (just maybe) John needed Sherlock too.

.

_ Only dull people believe in miracles and God, because miracles don't exist. _

_ Religion is just like shamming, except no one is ever willing to acknowledge the sham. _

_ But if Sherlock was ever ordinary enough to believe in omnipotent forces, then he would thank every last one of them for creating John Watson and letting someone shoot him in the shoulder. If Sherlock believed in omnipotent forces he would also believe in miracles, and if that was the case John Watson counted. Most certainly. _

_ Sherlock would never deal in miracles, but he would deal with one. _

.

Sherlock doesn't _believe_ in general, and he doesn't ever deal in miracles. But John hasn't left him yet, and Sherlock is awfully, terribly clever.

* * *

><p>Please comment + let me know what you think! I'd love critical feedback (good or bad!) on this fic<em>—<em>I'm planning a companion piece and it would be super-useful to learn how readers reacted!

(P.S. Guys, thanks so much for the comments on "(Never) Mind the Gap"! It was the perfect welcome to the Sherlock fandom!)


End file.
